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Hywel Davies reports on the Rick Owens show

by Hywel Davies on 18 January 2013.

Owens isn’t known for generating new trends each season, as his steadfast and confident approach to menswear faithfully fuses military, sports and tailoring influences, providing uniforms for his hard-core fashion warriors.

As a backdrop, an oversized light-box provided the prescriptive glare for Rick Owens’s winter collection, and with a throbbing base booming from the sound system, the well-versed techno-aggression was in play.

Owens isn’t known for generating new trends each season, as his steadfast and confident approach to menswear faithfully fuses military, sports and tailoring influences, providing uniforms for his hard-core fashion warriors. His post apocalyptic vision and signature colour palette of black, grey and white continues to exist as a secure wardrobe for his devotees.

This season fur was enlisted to convey a new opulence but contrasted with Owens’s signature denim and leather, which ensured the collection remained loyal to the iconic Owens street-informed realism. The standard monotone shades of black, slim leather pants and scoop neck tank tops all showed up. A biker jacket in shaved mink and a nylon coat with sections of shearling added to the new luxury.

Androgynous models, an essential motif of Owens’s vision, were this season styled with a rock edge, sporting disheveled hair and were energised with a hedonistic swagger. Sporting voluminous coats belted at the waist, cowl necks, elongated tanks, asymmetric leather jackets and moon boots, the models’ gear all angled to Owens’s new sumptuousness aesthetic.

Owens continues to unleash his combatant spectra to his swarm of fans and while his tough approach is sometimes aggressive, the designer’s ability to slightly shift the focus of his collection each season is commendable.